Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
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User ID: 551
Jason Aldean’s Try That In a Small Town has gotten substantial media discussion and has been covered here as well, with one of the themes I see being country, conservative, and small-town defenders noting that the song isn’t actually particularly violent compared to rap. While I think this is obviously true, there’s been something about it that has rubbed me wrong, and I finally put my finger on it while I was running with some country music in my ear from Spotify recommendations. The song that got me thinking for the first verse in Bryan Martin’s Wolves Cry:
Well, I was born on the banks of the Sabine River
Not far from the Texas line
I ain't got much but I'm damn proud of this Double wide up in the pines
I'll do whatever it takes, I'll go to my grave
Protecting me and mine
So you better understand if you step on my land
I'll leave you where you lie
Much like the Aldean kerfuffle, one distinguishing feature from rap violence is that there is implied instigation on the part of whoever’s going to be left to lie, but the verse above leaves much less ambiguity about what happens if you cross Martin on his land. Martin’s music has a decent bit of this sort of edge, with Everyone’s an Outlaw clarifying that this isn’t exactly a Back The Blue situation:
Well, I was raised up by a simple man
I grew up with a gun in my hand
Taught me how to love and how to fight
Taught me what's wrong, taught me what's right
…
Yeah, this life gonna be real damn tough
You take them scars and you call that bluff
Don't let me catch you fittin' in
'Cause everyone's an outlaw
'Til it's time to do outlaw shit
This clearly articulates honor culture values, that you’re morally obligated to do what’s right, including stepping up and killing someone if necessary. These themes aren’t at all uncommon in country music, although they’re usually not as aggressive in the most popular music.
Returning to my point, what I’ve realized bothered me about resorting to comparisons to rap is how whiny, pussified, and self-pitying it sounds to me. While some people did just just reply that honor culture is good, that men should be willing to commit violence against outsiders that wrong them, there was this appeal to how the black people can get away with being tough and cool and they’re way tougher and cooler than country white people, which played into the hands of people that write things like this Rolling Stone article:
These talking heads go after hip-hop because it’s a convenient punching bag. It’s much easier to appeal to Americans’ latent fear of Black expression than it is to defend something like Jason Aldean’s video. Never mind that this is the same ideological movement that’s always talking about free speech — the hypocrisy is nothing new. Neither is the failure to consider hip-hop as a serious artform that deals with all aspects of human life, including the negative ones. In a follow-up tweet, Walsh took an ugly pot-shot at the late rapper King Von, who was killed just as his career was getting off to a promising start in 2020. Has he ever listened closely to King Von’s music, or thought about what it might mean for an artist to give voice to the people he grew up alongside in Chicago? It’s doubtful.
For me, this is another example of the woke are more correct than the mainstream. Don’t whine about black music! Respond to this criticism by saying that it’s much easier to appeal to PMC fears of chud expression, that liberals said they favored free speech, and that this is a serious art form that deals with all aspects of human life, including the negatives. Have they ever listened closely to country singers and thought about what it might mean for an artist to give voice to the people that they grew up alongside in the trailer park? It’s doubtful.
I grew up in a rural, heavily white area, and the men I knew from that area really do represent the sort of rugged individualism and willingness to engage in violence embodied in some country music. Some of this spills over into behavior that I’m not personally a fan of, maybe even “toxic masculinity”, but I think it’s a culture that’s worth articulating and defending, not one that can only be defended by way of saying that black culture is worse. Jason Aldean is the light, poppy version of this, but country music really does have a fair bit of violence, and it’s good, actually.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
1yr ago
First, you're mostly just going to catch the stupidest criminals this way. The smarter criminals will be able to evade capture for much longer. So we're only catching people who would have eventually been caught, anyways.
Why is this bad? Removing the dumbest and most impulsive criminals from society as fast as possible seems like a net boon. Letting them run around doing dumb, malicious things when they're readily observed being dumb and malicious just seems like a terrible plan.
Second, stupid criminals will make stupid choices. They'll make the decision to run/fight more often than not. This means cops could get injured, or some dumb criminal (and many criminals are legitimately mentally retarded) will get hurt/killed.
Doesn't this contradict the first point? If you're going to need to arrest these imbeciles at some point, you might as well get it over with.
If a citizen ever lays hands on these individuals, we send in the real police to do a summary execution. Otherwise cops aren't involved in anything to do with those stops or enforcement of those laws.
Wait, I thought you were just saying that arresting the low-level criminals was a problem because it's not politically tenable...
It's absurd to pay police officers to be stopping people for broken traffic lights, or for littering, or for evading fares. Because then everybody becomes guarded in their interactions with police.
Well, not everybody. Pretty much all decent people just don't litter or jump turnstiles.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
3mo ago
What things do you have very different personal preferences and policy positions on? Do you have any area that you didn't even realize that until the policy changed and lined up with your stated position?
The biggest one that I have been having a difficult time with lately is marijuana. For my entire life, I thought marijuana should be legal and that it's pretty hard to justify having a substantially different control scheme for marijuana than alcohol (tobacco is quite different and I think the comparison is pretty stupid). I still hold this position due to everything I can figure out objectively. There are a few caveats, such as the potential for marijuana to trigger schizophrenia, but really, I doubt it does more harm to a typical person than drinking. I even smoked a decent bit when I was in my younger, party years, and pretty much just had harmless fun.
Nonetheless, it turns out that I don't actually like legal marijuana much. I didn't really notice it when it was mostly illegal, but weed culture is fucking annoying. I get that some people feel that way about alcohol, and I can certainly think of all-out drunkenness scenes that I don't like, but there are big chunks of drinking culture that I do like - craft beer, good bourbon, wine-tasting, cocktails, tailgating, food-drink pairings, this stuff is all somewhere between lowbrow fun and genuinely interesting culture. Pot though? Just fucking annoying. Stupid aesthetics, lazy slobs, constant whining about how pot is actually good for you, man. I don't personally dislike the smell of pot but smelling it on my state's capitol square on a weekday morning is just utterly degenerate. None of this convinces me that it should be illegal, my annoyance doesn't suffice to want something banned, but damn, it turns out that I find stoners way more annoying than I ever would have thought when they had to just smoke at their houses.
Male and female competitiveness - a case study in the running world
Many of the conversations about gender differences in sports emphasize the role of culture in encouraging or discouraging participation in a gender-differentiated fashion. I think running provides an interesting example of the type of approaches that men and women tend to bring to sports in the context of a relatively gender-egalitarian sport. At nearly every running distance from sprints up to marathon, there is a consistent, persistent difference between men and women of approximately 10-12% (see this slightly outdated chart, the couple records broken since don’t change the story). Relative to sports that rely on strength or are highly multi-dimensional, men and women are much, much closer in actual ability, with elite women outperforming competitive hobbyist men in a way that you don’t see elsewhere. Based on personal observation of the sport and understanding of strategy, this is little or no difference in the way men and women approach races at high levels, with the similarities in pacing, drafting, and finishing kick resulting in a similar aesthetic between men’s and women’s races. Also of note, there is no large split in participation between men and women at amateur levels, with local races and clubs being fairly close to 50-50 and often including more women.
Despite these similarities, anyone that participates in local races will notice one very striking difference between men and women - there are a lot more men that are genuinely competing, trying to do their best for a given distance and fitness level than women. For example, one recent local race I competed in was an 8K with roughly five thousand participants; the men’s winner ran a shade under 24 minutes, the top 10 men were under 27 minutes, and 64 men cleared 30 minutes. The top woman was over 30 minutes and finished 76th overall. The 10th place woman came in around 34 minutes. Without being rigorous about the math, we can see at a glance that there are about 7 times as many men hitting a 70% age grade, which is generally a good cut-off for being a competitive hobbyist. From personal observation, this trend repeats itself in most local races, especially when there isn’t any significant prize money on the line (money brings pros, which tightens things up at the top a fair bit).
Prior to any speculation on what’s going on with that sort of disparity, I want to emphasize that among the women that are competitive, I see basically no difference in approach between the men and women. I work out with a few of the local fast women, these were D1 runners in college, and they’re all the same obsessives about running tons of mileage and hammering big workouts that the guys are. In my experience, the women at any given age-grade above approximately 65-70% treat the sport very similarly to the men.
So why are there so many fewer women in that bucket? Some speculative reasons in no particular order:
-
Physical development is much, much harder for the median woman than the median man. They’ve tried at some point, but they don’t get the immediate physiological response to stimulus that the men get, so they stop caring as much about it. Anecdotally, a powerful female runner friend of mine has told me that she feels like her buildups and improvement are always much slower than men. I think this is physically plausible and that the women who do hit higher age-grades are more anomalous than men.
-
Women get pregnant. Training hard after pregnancy is more challenging than any inflection point men have. I don’t think this explanation is terribly likely because my observation doesn’t suggest a bit change across age groups, but I haven’t been rigorous and I’m open to correction.
-
Fewer women have competitive personalities. Women tend to enjoy the social aspect of the sport more and focus more heavily on that, enjoying easy-paced runs with friends, getting into races to do an event with friends, and so on. Men, even social, friendly men, tend to be hypercompetitive about anything they care about, focusing heavily on self-improvement and metrics.
Any of those could be true and I’m sure I could come up with more, but the reason I think this makes good culture-war fodder is the implications for Title IX. Running is more physically gender-egalitarian than other sports, women participate in it at high rates, women’s tactics, strategy, and training is similar to men’s, the culture of the sport is welcoming to all, and yet, there just aren’t very many women that show much interest in competing. If women aren’t interested in running after decades of mandated equal funding for college sports, what hope is there for some actually gender-egalitarian world in sports more broadly? Is the answer from people that think there shouldn’t be observed differences in male and female preferences just that running is still somehow sexist in a way that I just can’t see? I suppose if you take disparate-impact doctrine entirely seriously, what it suggests is that whether I can see it or not, discrimination against women must be happening in the sport somehow.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
5mo ago
My prediction is that the most vocal coverage will be conservative Twitter/substack trying to make this about Democrat hypocrisy with regards to crime.
Yes, I agree with this prediction. The most common take will be something along the lines of, "see Democrats believe that shooting people that steal from people that matter is good, they just think you don't matter". For my part, I agree that shooting thieves is good, but I expect that most of the soft-on-crime left will maintain ideological consistency and say that it's bad that the Secret Service would shoot at someone that wasn't even a threat to anyone.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
1yr ago
For example, I often hear and read comments from citizens of other western and Anglo nations which imply that their "rights" are fundamentally the same as those enjoyed in America
The one that always pops to mind for me as a refutation of this claim is the ease to which civilians can arm themselves in much of the United States. I know that people in other ostensibly free nations will disagree, but I regard this as an absolutely core freedom, integral to whether an individual is currently free and whether they're likely to remain so in the future. If you're required to justify why you need a firearm, no, your place of residence is not as free as mine.
Suppose you are a billionaire and want to decrease the amount of racism in the world; what decent options do you have?
Assuming I live in the United States, partake in litigation against affirmative action. Continue to press on the blatantly racist measures Harvard and other elite institutions have implemented to exclude academically qualified Asian-American and flyover white Americans.
Suppose you are a CEO of a corporation, what policies do you put in place to ensure there is no discrimination based on skin color in hiring, promotion, etc?
Well, it's going to be hard, because the way EEOC rules work in the United States, I pretty much have to put a thumb on the scale in favor of black candidates. Then once they're hired and (as a cohort) underperform their peers, I have to have HR continue putting a thumb on the scale at each level of promotion, lest I be said to racistly only hiring them, but not promoting them.
Personally, I'd prefer to do away with those measures altogether, but trying to avoid the voracious testers and attorneys of the United States Justice Department isn't easy.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
10mo ago
Had a response, realized who's posting, and realized that it's all a bit too tidy. Oh, yeah, are you deeply affronted by users like sentinellgrave? You're not posting that looking to elicit a response of any sort? Definitely not attempting to move the needle in any particular direction?
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
8mo ago
Greg Johnson
I'm not familiar, so I clicked through, and kind of did a double-take at this quote:
“Blacks don’t find white civilization comfortable. It is like demanding they wear shoes that are two sizes too small when we impose our standards of punctuality and time preferences, demand that they follow our age-of-consent laws, or foist the bourgeois nuclear family upon them. These things don’t come naturally to Africans. White standards like walking on the sidewalk, not down the middle of the street, are oppressive to blacks. Such standards are imposed by the hated ‘white supremacy’ system. But if we don’t impose white standards upon them, we have chaos. We have great cities like Detroit transformed into wastelands.”
Prior to the last two concluding statements, this seems like a take that DEI people would largely nod along with (aside from the age-of-consent dig). Shades of the Ryan Long gag video.
Anyway, I agree, there isn't really any space for a true far-right in the United States. In your link, I think Johnson articulates the reason:
“We White Nationalists claim that the mixing of races inevitably causes hatred and conflict. So it is silly for us to pretend that we are immune to the effects of racial mixture. If White Nationalists who claim not to hate other races are honest, then they are living refutations of their own claim that multiracial societies breed hatred. ‘I am living proof that multiracial societies cause racial hatred.’” [emphasis mine]
Yes, exactly! This is largely self-refuting for most people. If you've actually spent time with people of other races, you probably wound up noticing that some of them are good, some of them are bad, and that group-level forced segregation isn't all that appealing of an ideological tenet. Of course, a few people will disagree, but I don't think they're going to do all that well as a political force. Despite the claims that all white Americans are racist, it sure seems like the stance held by most white Americans is that they don't hate other races.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
11mo ago
I do wonder if words can do justice with how threatening Neely was being on that train.
Probably doesn't matter that much for general conversations. I'm sure it'll matter legally, but when we're having the ethical discussion about it, it's going to just keep coming back to some people thinking that you shouldn't ever get violent with a belligerent vagrant that has not yet initiated any physical force and others not caring what happens to belligerent vagrants. This probably isn't a bridgeable divide and most of the nuance is intellectual window-dressing. Yes, it would be best if the person doing the restraining exercise somewhat more caution than choking a guy to death. Yes, it's also true that restraining someone will not be completely safe for the restrainee, particularly when they're likely high as a kite and experiencing excited delirium. Neither of those points really moves the needle from people's gut responses.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
1yr ago
It's a national issue - I don't just want them out of my state, I want them out of country. I want them to never try coming back. This requires changing the prevailing national political winds, not just state-level policy that shifts which states illegal aliens prefer to live in. If I lived in Florida, sure, I'd also want a hardline approach that's effective in the short-run, but I would still be in favor of this sort of political gamesmanship.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
1yr ago
You're essentially arguing that black and Latino students should just accept the reality that they aren't as smart as white people, and be grateful that there are white people around to serve as role models.
That's basically how white people relate to Asian students and it seems basically fine to me. I don't actually find it all that degrading to know that my ethnic group doesn't have the highest average IQ and I don't actually think it says much of anything about me individually.
Seems pretty stupid. It wasn't Asian empowerment that put someone like Ketanji Brown-Jackson on the Supreme Court - it was good old-fashioned American racial patronage. The idea that black Americans are so incompetent that they can't partake in political patronage is just wildly uninformed and ignores the masterful play of figures like Jim Clyburn, who is likely responsible for Biden's promise to pick a black woman for the court, regardless of merit.
Whenever I see this kind of thing I'm reminded of what was said about the Irish... or the Italians.
To be clear, these groups ran organized crime networks that caused a ton of trouble. I don't really understand the perspective that people thought the Irish and Italians were corrupt, and boy-howdy were they wrong. Irish and Italian immigrants really did cause a lot of problems.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
1yr ago
I'm also suspicious of single men (after a certain age) because it suggests that there's something flat out wrong with them. Whether it's inability to find a good partner or lack of willingness to keep one, they're doing something that's going to make me trust and respect them less. I don't know that I've met a man in his 30s that is loyal, smart, and likeable that isn't married. The best you're going to get in most cases is two of the above.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
1yr ago
Ah - I assume that it's implicit that I think communities belong to the entire community, not to me personally. If the majority of people in the neighborhood think that inviting more hobos to hang out is the right thing to do and should probably be considered a new amenity, well, tough shit for me. As much as I'd like to be the dictator of my own fiefdom, I'd settle for collaborative local control of policies. I suppose equally implicit is that I reject the idea that anyone that owns a given yard can do as they like with it, free from government interference.
There's so much that's wrong about these sorts of claims regarding gender parity in sports, but something that I feel usually goes unmentioned is just how belittling and condescending it is to female athletes. The sport that I have the most personal experience with is running, so I'll focus there for this point. Running happens to be a sport where there are smaller gaps between men and women than sports that rely more on size and strength, but there remains a persistent 10-12% difference in speed at every single distance (see world records here if you're curious)). Less statistically provable, I see the same sort of differences pop up at pretty much every level of the sport, including my mediocre hobbyist level (e.g., I can run 20K in 1:18, women with similar weekly mileage, similar physical build, and similar apparent fitness run roughly 1:26-1:26).
So, what's it saying about women to say that the difference is culturally constructed? Well, it must be saying that their training is, in some way, inferior. That when a Kenyan woman blazes an incredible 2:20 marathon and wins the female side of competition, the reason she's so much slower than the men is that she wasn't supported enough or didn't work hard enough or didn't eat right. That seems false, since the men and women do exactly the same thing. Or that in the 20K mentioned above, when I finish like 20th in a local race, but ran by the second-place woman in the last couple miles, she just wasn't pushed hard enough to succeed, or didn't train right. That's even more wrong though - I know her, I know she ran in high school and college (I didn't start running till my mid-20s and have never had a coach) and know that she runs more miles than I do.
This mentality that physical differences between genders are constructed strips these women of the respect they deserve. When I narrowly beat a female runner, I know that she's a better runner than me. I know that she's likely more talented than me, has likely outworked me, and that every bit of speed gain she gets is harder to come by than my testosterone-fueled improvement. The perspective that the reason I'm faster is because of culture rather than biology denies her the respect that she deserves for her hard work, instead making her an object of pity, insisting that if it weren't for some ephemeral oppression, she'd be just as fastest as the boys.
I hate it.
Genuinely, it is hard to come up with anything to say that isn't already immediately obvious to any casual observer. My main reaction is that after all the sturm und drung about our sacred democracy, the people that want this are doing everything in their power to destroy the remaining legitimacy of Our Democracy. Of course, this thinking is about on par with the elephant in StoneToss.
Second is that I can barely contain my contempt for the legal profession and all of its fake pseudo-philosophizing. Hundreds of pages. They wrote hundreds of pages on this. Does anyone believe that hundreds of pages were necessary to arrive at this conclusion? Whether you think January 6 was an "insurrection" that disqualifies Trump or not, it's pretty obvious that you view isn't going to be based on careful line-item reading of endless history and text. In writing so extensively on the topic, the justices clarify that they're just liars concocting elaborate explanations for doing what they want to do anyway.
Finally, I would predict increased potential for violence, and it sure does seem like the people in charge are pushing the envelope, but after 2020 and its fallout, it's hard to imagine the American right doing much other than the elephant from StoneToss routine.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
8mo ago
Why is it hard to believe that pro-lifers really, honestly think that abortion is murder? If they believe that it really is murder, the level of restraint they've shown in sticking to lawfare and eventually succeeding in some limited fashion is a pretty remarkable story. I disagree with their starting point, but that's hardly the point when it comes to their actions.
I still have no idea how anyone can honestly believe that the Supreme Court has any meaningful role to play in this at all. I suppose penumbral emanations are powerful things, but it seems pretty obvious to me that there simply no Constitution-based policy to be had.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
1yr ago
Which, judging by the Breitbart comments and replies I expect here, laughing at my pearl clutching is absolutely the point. You want me to be mad, you want me get up on my soapbox and bleat some self-righteous Soyjak lines about muh poor illegals so you can get mad right back and it feels good.
No, I want the people that live in Martha's Vinyard to admit that living around illegal aliens fucking sucks and everyone knows it. I want them to admit that despite having way more than enough wealth to handle 50 people, they don't want to, because they know that it's bad for their community. I want the people that utter platitudes about how diversity is our strength to deal with even the slightest bit of personal consequence for their ideology.
Of course, I don't have any illusion that any of these things are going to happen, but putting it as blatantly front and center as this does might at least make it apparent to fencesitters that the empathy of the very wealthy for illegal aliens only extends as far as some other neighborhood.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
1yr ago
Combining the Culture War drinking thread and the weekly What Are You Reading fun thread, what are you drinking this week?
As a big bourbon fan, I'd never quite hit on a Scotch that really got me excited, but I admittedly hadn't tried that many, so I grabbed a bottle of Abelour A'bunadh this week and it really is fantastic stuff. The sherry aging is very prominent, but stops short of being oversweet, leaving tons of fruitiness and a bit of a dark chocolate finish.
On the beer end, I've laid off my usual affinity for huge barrel-aged stouts and big NEIPAs to try to cut a few calories out, instead opting for some classic Guinness Extra Stout and Founders All Day IPA. They're both... fine. I like them just fine, but I miss the sugar bomb beers.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
1yr ago
So does it being a national issue excuse Desantis or Abbot from not taking a hard line against employers within the boundaries they control?
No, it doesn't.
This looks to me like a 2002 Democratic governor pulling some stunt regarding gay marriage while their own state hasnt legalized gay marriage. My reaction would be "screw that! Do what you can in your state and then pull some stunts!"
Yeah, that actually worked. No one succeeded in taking that action at the state level, they pulled it off with federal legal shenanigans. I don't think this example works in the direction you're kind of implying.
I dont underatand why people againstt illegal immigration are giving governors a pass when they pull stunts rather than do what they can.
I don't think I'm granting such a pass. I think Desantis and other governors should attack the issue from multiple angles and do so as aggressively as politically feasible. I don't think there's 4D chess going on here or anything, I think Desantis just likes flashy, politically combative maneuvers. Sure, I'd like him to do more on it locally, but I'm still going to be happy to see a culture warrior on my side of the issue.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
2mo ago
My first thought is that there is absolute no tension or conflict between the Moms for Liberty position that parents should substantially control what schools teach and having leadership that is permissive with underage drinking and group sex. Contra the position that MfL is a group of lunatic right-wingers, I think they are actually sincere in their position that parents should be determining values rather than schools. Despite the snarky "family views indeed" from columnist Scott Maxwell, it is actually entirely possible to promote family values while having a personally kinky sex life or thinking it's fine for teens to play beer pong. If we weren't so deep into red-blue bullshit, pretty much everyone I know on the Blue Tribe side of things would think this is fine.
On your last point, I looked up the people involved, and... wow. Christian Ziegler is a rather dumpy fellow. Christian's wife, Bridget, is absolutely beautiful, particularly for a woman in her 40s. I don't know if this was supposed to be a hit piece, but the screencaps of her making faces at a board meeting sums it up. But now you tell me that not only does the portly fellow have a stunning wife, he was apparently regularly finding threesomes with her? I swear, if this whole thing was flipped around, the Blue Tribe would just be making fun of the Red Tribe for being jealous of Christian's life.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
8mo ago
Edge cases don't need to be the basis for how we construct our society.
They are, on the other hand, excellent tests for how we think about things.
What's the argument?
The most plainly I can state my position on the matter is that I don't think I should feel morally obligated (less still, be legally obligated) to respect people's stated identities. Instead, I think my obligation to respect someone's identity extends as far as that identity is reflected in the actual reality of the individual and what they seem to wish to gain from using that identity.
If you don't like trannies just say that.
I don't have a generalizable problem with trans-identified individuals. I know trans-identified individuals that are personally pleasant, have made an honest attempt to appear to be their chosen gender, and that require nothing onerous from anyone. As the saying goes, they just want to be left alone. I'm more than happy to provide them with the respect and decency that they want (and in my opinion) deserve.
My point is not that no one should have their stated identity respected, it's that there are examples of people who clearly have fake, illegitimate identification, and that this demonstrates that not all stated identities need to be respected by either individuals or the state. Where that line is will be a matter of legal wrangling and personal inclinations, but I reject the frame that allows a literal Nazi human-butcherer to convert to a Jewish woman when convenient.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
6mo ago
I'm not clear what the problem is. Do you feel that it's just viscerally unfair that some people need to work and some people don't? That people who have wealth should have it confiscated until they're in a position of needing to work again? I promise, I'm not being deliberately obtuse here. Designing policies with the goal of enabling anyone willing to work to have a reasonably decent life seems like a good starting point to me, but that doesn't suggest that there wouldn't be or shouldn't be capital-holders that have arrived at a position where personal labor is no longer necessary for them to draw their living. If the problem is the unsustainability of the rate of return on capital, tweaking some of the more audacious tax policies seems like a plausible approach, but I would need to know what exactly we're trying to fix and what the goal is before really undertaking a discussion of where to go.
In the most pithy form - is retirement just plain immoral?
I was baffled, then I got to this exchange and I think I understand now:
In this weirdo version of a prisoner's dilemma, everyone can cooperate by hitting Red and all is well, or everyone can cooperate by hitting Blue and all is well. If you have normal coordination and everyone chooses Red, they're all good, but if someone "defects" to Blue, they get killed. You or I apparently don't worry about the defector - just don't be an idiot and you're fine. Other people want to save the idiot contingent so much that they're willing to risk their own lives for it (at least in a Twitter poll). In a scenario where the only person punished by defection is the defector, the threat of that person suiciding is enough to make people change course.
What's wild is that I think this does actually have some explanatory power. When I say that I don't really care about bad outcomes for people that can't do something as basic as show up to work in a country where it's as easy as the United States, this poll makes it obvious that the Blue-pressers are willing to risk their own wellbeing for people that are too stupid to just push the correct button. This also seems like it helps explain the efficacy of hunger strikes, which I've never viscerally grasped - if someone elects to starve themselves in response to something, I am morally blameless when they starve, and their argument completely fails to persuade me. I see their actions working on others via media exposure, but I've never understood how the threat of killing yourself is supposed to move others to your position. Apparently, "give me what I want, or I'll kill myself" works even what the person wants is just the ability to smash Blue. To be fair, their impulse probably is pro-social, but it's also completely foreign to me.
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